Using Technology to Enhance ESL Learning

Facebook
came gently into my life back in 2006 when one of my very socially-inclined
students sent me an invitation; I resisted this invite for months. It reminded
in my mailbox though while I pondered for weeks whether or not I should give up
my freedom to privacy. I knew what facebook was about; I had heard stories
about this social space, the wild land of the
20 something generation. But, eventually, facebook and I, we
ended up in a relationship, like many relationships - a stormy one.

The issue whether or not facebook could be more than just a social space has
popped up again and again. Back in January and February, during the EVO2008
session we were running on the uses of social tools in teaching EFL/ESL, SMiELT,
our discussion got somewhat sidetracked and a number of us ended up chatting
about the possibilities of using facebook with our
students to teach English. The second time facebook came back into our
discussions, this time with a big bang, was the infamous Ryerson scandal when we all learned that students
still cheat – how surprising – this time though they were using a new social
medium to do that (the life of a cheat note had come to a timely end, it
seems). One of the engineering students got charged for opening a study
group which, in fact, was a place to exchange solutions for their chemistry
class. This past June, facebook became a discussion topic once again in a
course I was taking at YorkU.
Last night, July 2, I went on facebook after a month-long, self-imposed
isolation. The truth was that over the months I had become an addict of facebook
and I needed to see

1.if my life
can still exist with it

2.what
happens to facebook when one stops facebooking

3.decide if
I wanted to use facebook as a teaching tool

The answers
are:

1.my life
got much better without it

2.facebook
dies a natural death when one stops facebooking (the same as it is with virtual
gaming: “The world exists because of you.”)

3.no, I
would not use it for educational purposes.

This last
realization is quite contrary to my stance on the issue at the beginning of the
year.

Why on earth
would anybody even consider using facebook to teach anything? In one of the
posts during the June discussions with my class, the justification for using
facebook in education came from the observation that the site is used extensively
by the Generation Y crowd.

"Michael
Tracey, a journalism professor at the University of Colorado, recounts a class
discussion during which he asked how many people had seen the previous night's NewsHour
on PBS or read that day's New York Times. "A couple of hands
went up out of about 140 students who were present," he recalls. "One
student chirped: 'Ask them how many use Facebook.' I did. Every hand in the
room went up. She then said: 'Ask them how many used it today.' I did.
Every hand in the room went up. I was amazed."

Given then that
the attention of the 20something crowd seems to be centred around facebook
nowadays, the suggestion from one of the discussants was, “Perhaps it would be
better if educators could see the value of using facebook as a tool to
encourage subject discussions beyond the classroom.” Yeah, right!

After the
EVO2008 sessions, Mary asked if I would be interested in
contributing to a discussion on using facebook in our teaching; I
enthusiastically said yes. It was kind of a Marxist crusade
– I had deeply-ingrained high ideals in regards to facebook; I believed that
the 20something crowd was ripe for an educational revolution, a revolution in
which facebook would be turned into a productive teaching tool. Marx’s
ideals came to an end in Eastern Europe in 1989 with the
Velvet Revolution after years of trials; my ideals came to an end
even before the revolution took place.

When I was considering the use of facebook for education in January, I was
mostly driven by my personal conviction that education can and should take
place anywhere. I had this highly ideal conviction that it is my responsibility
to stir my students towards learning wherever they are. I think I was a bit
naive then thinking that I can inspire the 20something to use his/her personal
facebook space to less futile goals than an exchange of seemingly nonsense and
hardly readable posts on their Walls or an exchange of hugs, which, in my
opinion at that time, served little, if any, purpose. I did decide though to
stand back and observe this social space to get the feel of the place; I looked
at their Wall posts and Super Wall videos, read their daily updates, saw how
their friendship grew from day to day, and how each facebook site is different
as it reflects each person’s individuality. I did the same: wrote on my
friends’ Walls, scribbled crazy updates at 2 am in the morning, and looked for
friends to add to my site. I personalized my page – I made it my own to reflect
who I am.

Then, it hit me. I woke up at 4:45 in the morning one day and came to a
conclusion that facebook IS really a SOCIAL SPACE, and that my students really
need to and want to use it to SOCIALIZE. Over these months of intense facebooking, I had
realized that it would be unfair and futile to impose my high educational
ideals on my students on facebook. I realized that trying to stir them towards
learning inside this very social and very informal environment is wrong.

One of the arguments put forward in our
discussions was that because technology is such a big part of their life, it
could be utilized to stir them towards learning. But that’s so wrong. Facebook
is a social place and they should use it for social purposes. It's THEIR place,
THEIR space, THEIR party. Making them use this very social space to learn
things is like crushing a party on a Friday night. One of the other teachers
pointed out that it is incredible how often students use facebook. And, that’s
true; yes, they do. But that’s because they need to. They need to exchange
nonsense videos, the need to send each other hugs, and they need to have a
place to vent their exasperation about education (how telling is that!) in
desperate messages in which they complain how much studying sucks. Taking away
this SOCIAL space from them and turning it into an EDUCATIONAL space would be a
crime.

Although I believe that using technology in teaching ESL/EFL is really important, each case, the context of teaching, is different. There is no one formula for all the teachers; on the contrary, using the technological tools should be customized to the needs of the program and the students. What are the needs of my program and my students? In the language school where I teach, the semesters are 8 weeks long. This means that given that in Week 1 we do assessment and in Week 8 we wrap it up and have parties, I have 6 weeks to teach my course and integrate technology meaningfully in my program. The emphasis of the program is also on academic preparation; therefore, any technology that I might be using in my curriculum needs to be used to prepare students for their life in an academic setting.

The major project that we do together over the 6 weeks I spend with one group is the research project. Students start early in the semester by choosing their topics and continue to collect data on that throughout the rest of the session. A research project can be both a boring and daunting assignment, done mostly by using the library system and its collection of books and other print materials. What I decided to do was to transform the nature of this project from a purely text-based project to a multi-media one. In addition to text-based resources students also look for information online using various other online applications.In this diagram, the middle part, "Classroom Teaching and Learning," represents the traditional, closed, classroom environment. The learners interact with each other and with their teacher for a couple of hours a day. They use the tools available in the classroom setting: blackboard, textbooks, notepads, dictionaries. They also have contact with each other which means with other students learning English who are at the same level they are; therefore, there is not much linguistic input taking place in this environment.

"Content-Based Teaching" refers to the research project that students are required to do; their learning environment is somewhat extended because they need to find resources and interact in English outside of the classroom environment (e.g., library, other students, etc.). Having one project to work on is a good base to develop their linguistic skills as they can concentrate on one topic that is of interest to them and they can build their linguistic knowledge by focusing on one area of studies. In addition to that, working on this project allows them to become experts and that in turns builds their confidence in using the language.

The addition of online tools such as blogs, podcasts, bloglines, and flickr allows the students to extend this learning environment even further. By using these online applications for their research purposes, students find information outside the confinement of their classroom/textbook/teacher environment and can also interact in English by joining groups and looking for other individuals interested in the same topics they are interested in. The arrows represent the dynamics of interaction that is taking place between the learner's traditional learning environment and the extended environment that is available online.

What does "social media" mean for you? Which social media have you used already and what are your feelings about it? The brilliance of social media is that it allows individuals to connect. This is something that is not only crucial for ESL/EFL students but to everyone else in general. We now have various applications that we can use for personal interests to find out where people travel (43places) or applications through which we can share our professional interests or knowledge (del.ici.ous). I am also a big fan of other social networking sites such as Facebook because those allow us find others who have similar interests and join in a conversation with them. I connected with many other EFL/ESL teachers just by having my presence on that site. The socialization and sharing of information that take place on these sites is definitely revolutionary. It is also something that the students already have in their blood, so forcing them to use text-based only materials for research, studying, or practicing their English skills seems to be "going back in time" and utterly unnatural. Adopting to what they do and how they function in their out-of-school environments is crucial for us. Social media allows us then to be able to meet the students' needs.